Pop Spotlight

Dave Grohl opens the 11th Foo Fighters album with a realization: “It came in a flash/It came out of nowhere/It happened so fast/And then it was over.” The line likely refers to the shocking death of beloved, longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins in 2022, or possibly the quiet passing, several months later, of Grohl’s mother, Virginia, at the age of 84. For some, death is not for singing about or making into art, those selfish little pursuits that turn pain inward, where it cannot be transformed into the substance of a mass healing ritual. For the Foo Fighters, it is for the Kia Forum, for Wembley Stadium.

Acknowledge this, and the pivot from eulogy to the pure rock’n’roll revivalism of “Rescued” feels inevitable and life-affirming. Whether or not people thought of Hawkins when they heard the song on the radio, “Rescued” must also acknowledge its purpose as the starting gun for Foo Fighters’ marathon live show for the next three years. “I’m just waiting to be rescued, we’re all waiting to be rescued tonight!” Grohl shouts in his indefatigable growl. Bono might endlessly roam the desert and Bruce might drive until there’s no road left in search of spiritual deliverance, but Foo Fighters are more practical and efficient—most of us have work in the morning.

But Here We Are does not change the Foo Fighters’ aesthetic in any meaningful way; it is not their grave, lonely album about loss. Rather, the most impressive thing about the album is how death is gracefully absorbed into this long-running franchise to reinvigorate the band. The album matches its tragic, highly public circumstances with the band’s most propulsive and purposeful music of the last two decades—a burned-out Christmas display that illuminates the entire neighborhood after someone finally finds the missing bulb.

“My Hero,” the most enduring anthem of the “Everlong”-era Foos, is the template upon which the near entirety of But Here We Are is based. And though spiritually that song channels the memory of Grohl’s former bandmate Kurt Cobain, its legacy lies more in how people have transposed “My Hero” onto their parents, 9/11 first responders, high school football highlights, buddy cop comedies, and Dragon Ball Z montages. It’s a populist anthem so broad and undeniable that it got co-opted by a Republican campaign, prompting the band’s own, more modest explanation of the song as “a celebration of the common man and his extraordinary potential.”

And throughout But Here We Are, this eternal pitch of humility and generosity is like the threat of the bus going below 50 miles per hour in Speed—as sure as “getting colder” rhymes with “over my shoulder,” as sure as an A-E-D chord progression signifies power-pop, Grohl steers Foo Fighters away from the maudlin and insular, offering earnest hope, fond reminiscence, and skyscraping choruses as if the band’s continued existence depended on it, because it almost certainly does. “Wouldn’t it be dangerous/If nothing was restraining us?” Grohl screams on the truly aggro outlier “Nothing at All,” though Greg Kurstin’s reliably cushy production keeps the band in a padded rage room. “Under You,” an MTV Buzz Bin throwback fizzy enough to sustain an entirely new set of Footos commercials, is as specific as things get: “Pictures of us sharing songs and cigarettes/This is how I’ll always picture you,” Grohl sighs, because my hero—my bandmate, my friend—he’s ordinary.

For the band themselves, “Under You” is a means of connecting with the naivete of their 1995 self-titled debut, coming full circle while acknowledging the distance en route. There’s no honest way to recreate the guileless genre-hopping of Foo Fighters, so But Here We Are puts a charming spin on the band’s current status as a benevolent rock conglomerate—the Foo Fighters’ starting lineup has expanded to include former members of Sunny Day Real Estate, the Germs, the Wallflowers and, with the addition of Josh Freese, nearly every legacy rock band of the past 30 years. It’s still MOR, but there are more lanes than ever on the sonic highway, and fewer detours into cartoon metal and unconvincing funk. “Show Me How” is a welcome return to the shimmering shoegaze Grohl hinted at on “X-Static,” exchanging a zonked-out Greg Dulli for the sympathetic harmonies of daughter Violet Grohl. Whereas the Cure tended to keep their arena rock and frosty post-punk separate, “Hearing Voices” evokes both within four minutes. The fractious title track is probably what major label A&Rs heard in their head while handing six-figure deals to Jawbox and Shudder to Think.

Yet these all feel like prelude to the final two songs of But Here We Are, which cement the album as the most inspired Foo Fighters record in recent memory. If the first eight tracks serve as Foo Fighters’ Back in Black—reacting to unthinkable tragedy with a blustery reiteration of formula—“The Teacher” and “Rest” are their Wish You Were Here. Taking up nearly a third of the 48-minute runtime, both are sincerely moving outpourings of grief and empathy for a lost soul, albeit without Pink Floyd’s withering cynicism towards the music industry and its complicity. Though Foo Fighters covered “Have a Cigar” with Taylor Hawkins on vocals, there’s no way they’d ever write a song like that themselves.

The circumstances around Hawkins’ death are profoundly sad and messy, and bring up a lot of uncomfortable questions about ambition, addiction, and the utter lack of meaningful mental health support for artists, even at the upper echelons of the music industry. These questions are perhaps best answered by organizing and policy changes, and not within the lines of a Foo Fighters song. Because what the band does best is honor a dear friend by turning a crowd of 90,000 into a puddle of joyous tears over the span of six hours. Maybe “Rest” would’ve been just as convincing had it remained a stool-bound acoustic ballad, but when it bursts into distortion halfway through, Foo Fighters acknowledge that, even as a set closer, it will probably be followed by “Monkey Wrench” or “I’ll Stick Around” in the first encore.

The one phrase that sticks with me the most owes to a tossed-off conjunction. Grohl sings: “I gave you my heart, but here we are,” which feels less accurate than if he sang, “I gave you my heart, and here we are.” It’s a more honest assessment of how this album is meant to be received—one man’s outpouring of grief, shared at the same altar as their triumphs.